OT - Your media habits

[JonInMiddleGA]

I'm sitting here working, seeing some things in terms of media usage by M25-54 that run contrary to what I expected before seeing the numbers.

So, I'm curious to see if the niche focus group FOFC could represent (male sports fans basically) is a closer match to my preconceived notions.

The question is -- In an average week, how many hours do you spend with:

Local radio stations?
Local broadcast TV stations?
Cable TV viewing?

The networks, programs, stations don't really matter for the question, I'm just looking at the usage of the various types vs one another.

While this is pretty much for my own purposes (to see if I'm just totally screwed in my expectations vs reality), I thought it might be enough curiosity for others that the thread wouldn't be a total dead weight that was interesting only to me.

Thanks in advance for playing along,
Jon

[digamma]

5-7 hours per week local radio (only travel time--25 minute commute twice per day, five days a week, plus a cushion for any weekend driving)
5-8 hours per week local/network television (more if there is a game on local television on the weekend)
5-10 hours per week cable television (rough estimate, again dependent on sports on the weekend)

[henry296]

Local Radio - 5 hours
Local TV - 20 hours
Cable - 15 hours

[Drake]

Local radio stations - 10 hours

This is the drive to and from work, almost completely talk radio (local AM station on the way home, Bob & Tom in the morning).

Local broadcast TV - 10 hours

Maybe. Depends on how much football I watch on Sunday.

Cable TV - nil

I don't have cable. Never have, in fact. Don't want it.

[Ben E Lou]

LOCAL RADIO
~30 hours per week during baseball season
~15 hours per week not during no-football/no-baseball season
~20 hours per week during football season

LOCAL BROADCAST TV
~7 hours per week during football season
~0 hours per week not during football season

CABLE TV
~1-2 hours per week

[Easy Mac]

Local radio stations? 3 (Jim Rome every now again, no ESPN radio here)
Local broadcast TV stations? 10 hours (never anything on, about half is football)
Cable TV viewing? 30 or more (I have nothing to do all day)

[Subby]

Local radio stations? 5-7 hours (drive time)
Local broadcast TV stations? 4-6 hours (Redskins game, SNL)
Cable TV viewing? 8-10 hours (Assorted sports programming, kids shows)

I spend far more time on the Internet than I do any other medium.

[TroyF]

Radio - Very, very rarely. Maybe an hour or two of sports talk per week. I have an MP3 car stereo and no desire to listen to 3 songs, followed by 5 minutes worth of commercials and a newscast I don't care about. I'll estimate high and say 2 hours per week. (I'll also listen to a local sports team if I'm driving and one is on, that doesn't happen all that often though)

Local TV - Lets see, I watch both CSI's, The Simpsons, Arrested Development and. . . sporting events on the weekends. Figure in 3 hours for the Bronco game every Sunday and 3-5 hours on a typical winter Saturday. We'll call it 8 hours or so on a winter weekend. Maybe 3 in the Summer. Maybe. :) Lets call it 10-12 hours a week total in the winter, less than 3 in the Summer.

Sattelite TV - Here is where most of my time is spent. ESPN, Discovery, Comedy Central, A&E, The History Channel, Court TV (evening forensic programs), Cartoon Network, SciFi, FX, Fox Sports World, Fox Sports Rocky Mountain, Discovery Times. . . you get the idea. Figure 25 hours or so a week. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally posted by SkyDog
LOCAL RADIO
~30 hours per week during baseball season
~15 hours per week not during no-football/no-baseball season
~20 hours per week during football season

LOCAL BROADCAST TV
~7 hours per week during football season
~0 hours per week not during football season

CABLE TV
~1-2 hours per week Jon:

FYI, virtually all of the "local radio" time is spent multitasking--either working, in the car, on the internet, playing computer games, or, in the case of college football, TV is on with sound down and radio is on with Munson. Virtually all of the non-sports-broadcast local radio time is talk radio.

[Radii]

local radio: 2 hours (just the drive to work + car time w/ the fiancee), does NPR count since its over local radio? Another 2 hours if so.

Local Broadcast TV? 9 hours during football season, 4-6 hours during college basketball season, 1-2 hours the rest of the year.

Cable TV? 10-20 hours, the TV is on a lot more than this but it's secondary, we fall asleep at night with sportscenter on and the sleep timer, things like that...

[cthomer5000]

Local radio stations? zero
Local broadcast TV stations? 4 hours standard, about 5 additional hours of football viewing
Cable TV viewing? 7 hours
The internet tops all of those combined, easily.
I only listen to internet radio when at home/work, and CD's when in a car/train.
my 5 hours of football viewing probably turn into about 1 hour of "general sports viewing" in the off-season
I can further break down my local TV viewing to 4 hours seinfeld/simpsons, the remainder football.
Cable is about 90% ESPN viewing.

[WSUCougar]

With thanks to digamma for the template:

3-4 hours per week local radio (only travel time--20 minute commute twice per day, five days a week, plus a cushion for any weekend driving)
2-4 hours per week local/network television (more if there is a game on local television on the weekend)
4-6 hours per week cable television (rough estimate, again dependent on sports and movies)

[wbonnell]

I listen to NPR on the radio about 5 hours a week. In addition, I spend another 5 hours reading the Christian Science Monitor. I am of the opinion that both sources are *relatively* unbiased.

Since I don't watch TV, that's a big 0 for the broadcast and cable news.

[Bee]

local radio - 50 hours a week. I listen in the car and all day at work.

local/network tv - 4 hours a week. I watch about 15 minutes of news in the morning and a usually a little in the evening. I seldom watch network tv.

cable tv - 12 hours. I watch sports and sometimes a show or movie. Mostly on the weekends and while I'm working at home on the computer I'll watch tv instead of the radio but that doesn't happen much anymore.

[Ksyrup]

With the assumption that (a) this refers only to me and not the "household," and (b) "watching" includes having the TV on when I'm doing other things (like surfing the net), here are my totals:

Local Radio - 15-30 minutes, tops

Local/Network TV - 2-3 hours

Cable TV - 20-30 hours (depends on season)

[henry296]

Originally posted by henry296
Local Radio - 5 hours
Local TV - 20 hours
Cable - 15 hours

Just recalculated, the local TV is a bit high, probably closer to 15, but it is 10 hours of time shifted TV.

[Samdari]

It's hard for me to differentiate some of these, since they largely depend upon whether games I want to watch are broadcast locally or on satellite/subscription.

Local Radio. The commutes total 6 hours a week, so let say 6-8 including weekend drive time.

Local/Network tv. 2-4 hours/week. 24, CSI and 0-2 hours of local news. Oddly, I hate 24, but will finish watching the season because I watched once and am the type of person who HAS to know the ending. Count on this being one hour less next year.

Cable stations - 20-25 hours a week from Labor Day to April 1. 0-5 hours from April to Labor Day. Most of this is watching sports events from my various subscriptions. This year I have Sunday Ticket, NBA League Pass, and ESPN Full Court (college hoops). I lumped this into the category of Cable stations, as sometimes the games in those sports which I want to watch are on ESPN. Sometimes they are even locally broadcast, but that is pretty rare, my sporting tastes mesh poorly with the locals.

[JonInMiddleGA]

wbonnell -- FWIW, this wasn't about "news" specifically, it was about "all use"; i.e. sports, movies, general programming, et al.

[JonInMiddleGA]

If you've already posted in this thread, thanks a ton. I really do appreciate it, 'cause this is helping me sort out some things that I'm really having a problem with in my own head. And when it comes to work stuff, that's a biggie.

In case you're just checking into this thread, the responses I've gotten are great but the more feedback I can get, the better.

For everyone who checks, posting or not, I'll explain in better detail what I'm wrestling with, how the results here relate to it, and WTF this mattered to me later today/tonight.

Thanks again. Now back to the grind.

Jon

[KWhit]

Local radio stations?

18 hrs / week (believe it or not that's ALL during commutes - I need to get a job closer to home!)


Local broadcast TV stations?

5 hrs / week (Mainly that's only for sports. During football season it's higher than that, but out of season it's much lower)


Cable TV viewing?

5 hrs / week (This is almost always while I'm on the computer surfing the net. I rarely sit down and watch anything on TV anymore)

[Honolulu Blue]

It's hard to characterize an average week since it tends to vary a lot from week to week and season to season. Still, I'll do my best:

Local radio - 2-4 hours (while I surf the Net or play games).
Local TV - Other than football, close to zero. Including football, probably 6-12 hours.
Cable - 15-25 hours (mostly sports).

[TLK]

Local radio stations? <1.... Try not to as much as possible....
Local broadcast TV stations? 10..... Simpsons, Lions games, MNF and Law & Order
Cable TV viewing? 25.... Most being on A & E and Court TV. Monday and Tuesday are the exception when I can watch three Law & Order episodes in a row on TNT.

[John Galt]

Local Radio: 0
Local TV: <5
Cable TV <5

I'm at work too much and the WWW is pretty much my only access point for news and most sports. I usually watch Law and Order SVU and a sporting event or two during the week, but that is pretty much it. I may leave on sitcom reruns for an hour or two when I'm home, but even that is pretty rare.

[FBPro]

Local radio: 5-7 hours driving
Local TV: 1-2 hours
Satellite TV: 20-25(Many times just listening, not "sitting and watching" as it is often on while I work on ESPN, etc. Most of it is sports but do watch a few shows.)

[B & B]

Radio - 1 hour

Local TV - 25

Cable TV - 20-25

Heavily depends on what games are on what channels as most Saturdays/Sundays are 12 hour marathons of football.

[cuervo72]

Lets see..

Local radio - 0. Syndicated radio, about 10 hrs/week (Mike & Mike, Don & Mike).

Local TV - this is a tough one. I'd say probably 5-10 hours, but maybe more towards the lower end of that scale. I don't watch many prime-time shows, the only real things I watch regularly are the world news and Seinfeld.

Satellite TV - the rest of my waking hours at home. The TV is always on. Now, whether I'm paying attention to it or not is another thing. Half of this time right now would be Buzz Lightyear of Star Command (the voice credits for this one are interesting, BTW) and Connie the Cow. This is the one drawback with TiVo....

Because I have Sunday Ticket, I'm counting all football as Satellite TV.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Thanks cuervo -- strictly FTR (for anyone else who posts later basically) the syndicated radio counts as local radio for my purposes, as I buy the advertising from the local station instead of the network.
and while I'm posting -- to all who've participated, thanks yet again
I believe I've just about settled on some conclusions about what was giving me a headache.

[sabotai]

Local Radio: about 20 hours a week, while at work (no CD player, just radio music, switching between 4-5 stations)

Local TV: I would say 5 hours during non-football season. Some weeks I won't watch any local TV. Add 12 or so hours for the Sunday games and Monday night.

Cable TV: Well, I could easily say something like 60-70 hours, because as I sit here on my computer all day, I have the TV off to the side and it's usually on Comedy Central, Discovery, TechTV, History Channel or ESPN(or ESPN2). But if you're asking how many hours a week I sit down and pay attention to the Cable TV...'bout 10 hours a week (mostly late night Comedy Central playing of Kids in the Hall, The Critic, Sports Night, etc. as I lay in bed waiting ot fall asleep), add in 5 or so for football season.

[Buzzbee]

Local radio - 10 hrs/week (drive time mostly and a little weekend driving) I'll add that this is less since Christopher Rude made the jump to AM. :( I listen to more CD's now. Also, at this time of the season I tend to listen to Christmas CD's a little more.

Local broadcast stations - < 1 hr (snippets here and there as I get ready in the morning and a headline catches my attention)

Cable TV - around 5. CSI or Law and Order occaisionally. Otherwise it is flipping channels at night trying to see if there is anything worth staying awake to watch. Usually not.

P.S. Speaking of Christoper Rude, any word on how that is working out? I listen from time to time so that I can listen to Jamie Dukes. I'm suprised that I like him as much as I do, but when they (meaning Rude) move from "Sports Talk" to "Guy Talk", I move from 680 to 790 or CD.

[Vince]

Local Radio - ~40 hours a week. I'm a delivery driver, and I listen to the radio whenever I work. Combine that with my off-work listening (not much) and you get about 40 hours a week.

Local Broadcast Stations - 0. I don't have time, and local TV around here sucks.

Cable TV - ~5 hours, if that many.

[Draft Dodger]

radio - almost zero
local broadcast TV - 5 hours
cable TV - 10 hours

75% of that is sports related.
and 0% of that is "reality tv"

[SackAttack]

Originally posted by JonInMiddleGA
Local radio stations?

Depends on the time of year. Baseball season, on the order of 12-20 hours a week (depending on my work schedule). The rest of the year, closer to 3-5.

Local broadcast TV stations?

Again, it's seasonal. Unless my favorite sports teams are on TV, very little. If I'm using the TV, generally, I'm playing video games.

Cable TV viewing?

None. I've got satellite. :D

[CamEdwards]

radio- about 15 to 20 hours
local broadcast tv- 2 hours
cable tv- 8 hours (if that)

[korme]

radio- 30 minutes
local- 6-8 hours dependant on sports
cable- 10+ hours

i have my tv on all day next to my computer so half the time i am half interneting, half watching.

[Daimyo]

Originally posted by JonInMiddleGA
Local radio stations?0
Local broadcast TV stations? ~4 (one NFL game and a TV show here or there)
Cable TV viewing?1-2?

Internet is definately the dominant media for my wife and I.

[cthomer5000]

I'm pretty interested to know what this info is for....

[STK]

Local Radio - 50 hours
Local TV - 3 hours
Cable - 15 hours

[Buccaneer]

Local radio stations?
Local broadcast TV stations?
Cable TV viewing?

0.
0.
0.

That's the truth, really.

[sterlingice]

Local radio stations? 10-15 hours I like to listen to an hour or two of Kietzman on 810 when I get back from work, provided he's not being an ass. Same for Jim Rome on the days when I'm not in class and he's on but that's much more rare.

Local broadcast TV stations? 10-15 hours With the loss of shows like the X-Files and Futurama and the crappification of the Simpsons, my habits are down from in the past. Samdari- I really liked 24 the last 2 seasons, but when I predicted what this season would be while watching last year's season finale, I knew it was time to pack it in. I do like to catch Leno and/or Conan most nights so that inflates the numbers quite a bit. Sporting events, too- the Chiefs have been pretty fun to watch this year and I'll catch college football, too, so I allocated 4 hours a week for that. But the only show I'm really a "regular" watching any more is CSI.

Cable TV viewing? 25-30 hours Ah, sweet, sweet cable, my refuge. Lots of people listen to music when they're on the computer, but I prefer TV as my white noise and that's why these numbers are so high. It doesn't really mean I'm watching said tv but it's on and I'm half paying attention. Did you realize you could watch 3 hours straight of The X-Files every night followed by 2 hours of Hercules (the old syndicated show with Kevin Sorbo. Some people might point to this and call it a tv wasteland. I clearly disagree ;) I'll certainly get in some watching of Cartoon Network each week and since Bravo started running The West Wing in syndication, that's 4 hours of tv I've taped a week to watch for some down time. I'll have a smattering of Comedy Central (when they have on their Sunday night block, correction, about half of it: Dilbert, the Critic, Duckman, and then Sports Night), TNT/TBS/USA/FX (sometimes I just can't resist a bad action movie), Sci-Fi (Stargate, Outer Limits), FoodTV, and ESPN, of course (I've given up on Sportscenter but I'll still watch the sports). Heck, there's a lot more than that even. I'm on my computer a good 6 hours a day, at least, and my tv is on for almost all of that. Then again, when the tv's on, I'm almost always doing something else. I don't just "sit down to watch tv" very much- that's what tapes are for and only CSI and the West Wing really get that treatment.

Hm... I'm curious what this is all about.

SI

[Pumpy Tudors]

Ah, I remember being tricked by my first communications professor into doing a class project along these same lines.

[Suicane75]

Local Radio- 10-15 Hours a week, all Howard Stern in the morning.
Local Broadcast TV- 5 Hours a week.
Cable TV- 8-10 Hours a week, pretty much all L&O on T&T.

[mckerney]

Local radio stations? 0 for right now. Being in a college dorm with a roommate really takes away from me listening to music/radio as I'm going to sleep. Otherwise it'd be 3-8 as I occasionally will listen to Love Line as I go to sleep
Local broadcast TV stations? 4-12. Don't want much other than football. Most of the crap that's on TV now sucks (reality shows, sitcoms like Friends and Will & Grace). Probably only one show that I regularly watch right now, at least until Family Guy comes back (hopefully)
Cable TV viewing? 0, don't have cable.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally posted by cthomer5000
I'm pretty interested to know what this info is for....

Broadly, it's for helping me not blow a #^&#%$! gasket when facts don't match my perception of things. I was banging my head against the wall pretty good when I made the first post.

More specifically, I'll explain sometime Wednesday. Right now, I'm just blown up for the day & am heading to bed.

You've all been helpful with something that was buggin' the hell outta me. Whether it shoulda been bugging me, well ... that's an argument for me & my wife (who also owns half the company) to have another time ;)

[astralhaze]

Less than an hour for each.

[Samdari]

Originally posted by sterlingice
Samdari- I really liked 24 the last 2 seasons, but when I predicted what this season would be while watching last year's season finale, I knew it was time to pack it in.

Yeah, just my luck. I decide to give it a shot (a huge leap for me, watching a network show) right as it jumps the shark.

[Buzzbee]

Originally posted by JonInMiddleGA
Broadly, it's for helping me not blow a #^&#%$! gasket when facts don't match my perception of things. I was banging my head against the wall pretty good when I made the first post.

More specifically, I'll explain sometime Wednesday. Right now, I'm just blown up for the day & am heading to bed.

You've all been helpful with something that was buggin' the hell outta me. Whether it shoulda been bugging me, well ... that's an argument for me & my wife (who also owns half the company) to have another time ;)

Ok JiMG - any word on what specifically had you bashing your brains?

And did we help?

[Buccaneer]

Originally posted by Buccaneer
Local radio stations?
Local broadcast TV stations?
Cable TV viewing?

0.
0.
0.

That's the truth, really.

Well, almost the truth. Each used to be a lot more but not since the internet. I can get much more "bang for the bucks (time)" by reading news stories and sports recaps online. In the car on my short commute, I sometimes have the CD playing but never the radio. With TV and cable, my wife has it on nearly all of the time upstairs. I go upstairs frequenty and usually watch for a few minutes whatever my wife has on - usually Food Network, HGTV, Law & Order, CSI and of course, football games. The minute she starts flipping channels, I'm outta there (a big pet peeve of mine).

[tucker342]

Local radio stations - about 6 hrs
Local broadcast TV stations - 3 hrs
Cable TV viewing - 5 hrs

[JonInMiddleGA]

Buzzbee & everyone else -- let me see if I can explain without seeming to be a real idiot.

I'll start with at least one more "thank you" to everyone to answered. I'd do that at the end of this post but it's likely to be so long that a lot of you won't make it that far ;)

I'll have to be vague in a few places in order to maintain some client confidences & such, but I think those details are pretty much secondary to the overall story anyway.

As some of you may know, I'm in advertising. Most of my work involves planning a pair of seasonal ad campaigns for our primary client. Typically that's a nationwide schedule on a cable network that his our target very well, supported in about 20 keys markets where we place outdoor (i.e. billboards) and radio ads.

Working now on the Spring '04 campaign & the client has asked us to look into changing the mix in the key markets -- possibly replacing the radio with either local cable (i.e. placed on specific networks, airing only in certain cities) or local broadcast TV (i.e. your basic local news,etc on local network affiliates). The impetus for the possible change is that several of their key vendors are pushing hard for them to devote most if not all of their ad budget at TV, specifically sports on television.

Okay, that's reasonable in theory, especially since local cable ads often cost much less than you might imagine and radio sometimes costs serious money.

So I start running the numbers, basically working out the Cost Per Point (CPP). That's a common advertising number that basically means how much does it cost to reach 1% of the target population.
Given the unit cost of each, it seems possible that local cable could bump radio in at least several places.

But ... when I start running the numbers, radio CPP's were coming in 3 to 7 higher than cable. For various reasons, I expected it to be higher but not to that magnitude. Scratching my head a little, it didn't take long for me to figure out that it was because, well, simply put -- there were damned few Men 25-54 watching ESPN, FNC, ESPN2, CNN, or anything else.

And that didn't register right in my mind at all

Hell, everybody I know watches ESPN. Often, they watch it a lot.
So where the heck were the numbers I expected to see?

Going into this, I expected radio & cable to have relatively close usage in the demo, with broadcast fading to the rear or close to it. When that didn't even come close, when that was practically inverted according to number after set of numbers after set of numbers, it created some sort of ... vapor lock or something in my mind. I couldn't reconcile "what I knew" with "what I saw". That may very well sound, well, stupid, but that's what happened.

And with just a week left before making the presentation that accounts for some 60% of our annual income, brain freeze ain't good.

Totalling the results given here by more than 30 generous souls:
Cable TV = 11.67 hours
Radio = 9.94 hours
Broadcast TV = 6.20 hours

Pretty much what I was expecting to see, give or take a little. And that confirmed to my satisfaction the little epiphany I had about the time I started this thread: we aren't typical in our media habits, not by a long shot.

By "we" I mean male sports fans, who the numbers indicate are badly outnumbered in the overall M25-54 universe.

I know, I know -- "Jon, given your field, you should have known that."

And at some level, I did. But having not dealt with television in quite some time, I guess I had forgotten. Or fell in love with the hype that "networks are dying, cable is thriving" and all that.

What this thread did was show me the numbers that were in my head, it helped me figure out where the heck they came from. At some point, I had started judging M25-54 by the behavior of M25-54 sports fans, convieniently forgetting that I'm much more surrounded by the latter than the former.
And being able to put my finger on how I got things so twisted was enough to let me put it behind me & get back to work.

In case you're curious, the eventual plan will (oddly enough) replace some of the radio & outdoor with cable placed at the national level on ESPN. Why? After I just said the usage sucked relative to other options? Simple -- if you pick your shots right, find the best bang for the buck, you can buy a spot that runs nationwide for about the same cost of buying the spots individually in about a half dozen medium to large cities.

Whew. If you read this far, I salute you.

Hope this made some sense and didn't turn out about as clear as mud.

Jon